At GCP poetry as it was just after Burns Night, we read a few of Burns’ poems, including those addressed to odd things like mouse, haggis, daisy, and ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’. (all available). Then, we had fun with our own attempts, and I discovered that it was not easy to do.
Red Herring
Dear Fish, they take your name in vain
and call you red,
when all do know your scales are silver,
with black slate and rainbow shimmer.
You slip and slither, stream through water,
never touching those beside you.
All together swift and swirling,
should you be red, well then I’d see you.
Is that the reason they miscall you?
One red herring in the shoal
calls attention, lets the rest pass by,
melded deep in ocean, invisible.
I see only you, red herring.
Your siren attractiveness hides much.
I didn’t want to spoil the herring photo by putting in a red one. The next poem is also an acrostic (look at the line initials). Sometimes that form, or any structure, makes it easier to begin writing. the last two are failed attempts to think like Burns, using ‘address’ and clearly I am not a Burns.
Horseshoe Crab
How paleolithic you are, black shiny carapace
Over the damp sand you leave a swath cleared
Ribbed as if small waves had passed, then
Sunk below in the shallow water, you hide.
Eyes search to find you, seek you,
Searching for that spiny tail, the giveaway,
Hoping that again your body will appear to view,
Out from underneath your sludge wet home
Existing, when reason says you should be extinct.
How paleolithic you are, black shiny carapace
Over the damp sand you leave a swath cleared
Ribbed as if small waves had passed, then
Sunk below in the shallow water, you hide.
Eyes search to find you, seek you,
Searching for that spiny tail, the giveaway,
Hoping that again your body will appear to view,
Out from underneath your sludge wet home.
Existing, when reason says you should be extinct.
Covered by a shell as large as dinner plate,
Rolled over on your back you are exposed,
All those legs, claws, crablike creature.
Body now so vulnerable, still I am in awe.
Kiwi
To a faraway bird that cannot fly
Just a name unseen by passersby
He lives in New Zealand, hides in the brush
He comes out at night, never in rush.
Had to stop there – this address to the flightless failed to find any more thought in my head and the next one wasn’t much better, no hope of being like a Burns, I then wrote about the red herring.
To my boot
I see a spot upon the floor
a clod of earth inside the door.
I see you boot with ribbed soles.
You’ve done your job too well,
now learn to dry without dropping
that mud you were designed to tramp.
Poetry of Moods and Moments 